p. 16 | Suffering from Cold

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1903

Suffering from Cold.

A well-known correspondent writes the Hearst papers from Europe that during this early winter, “the misery and sufferings endured by the poor in Paris and London during the Arctic weather have been simply appalling. In London, it has been practically impossible to cope with the evil. London has 940,000 poor; that is to say, people who can not afford to obtain the comforts of life. There are 320,000 who have not enough to eat, and can not afford to buy coal or wood to warm themselves with, and nearly 100,000 who have to receive relief from the parish. It may, therefore, be said that 1,300,000 people in London live just on the border line of want, and nearly one-third of them on the line itself. The slightest dislocation of trade, a few days’ frost, or what not, and these are over the brink, submerged, and starving.” In this country, throughout the great northwest, there is a great coal famine. The municipality of Battle Creek, Mich., for instance, thought it necessary to buy ten carloads of coal to sell at cost to the suffering people.